1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to using metrics of user access to online media assets associated with advertisements (“ads”) to determine which ads to present to a user of a media hosting service.
2. Description of the Related Art
Video hosting services allow users to discover videos that are available over the Internet. A user is able to discover videos of interest by submitting a search query to a video hosting service or by browsing in the different categories of the video hosting service. Once a user finds a video of interest and selects a link to the video, the link directs the user to a webpage where the video is presented to the user.
On specific webpages, the video hosting service presents ads to the user. Each ad may be associated with a video; the ad may promote the video itself, a product or service of a sponsor of the video, a product of a service of an unrelated third party, another video, a website, or the like. For example, if a user submits a search query to the video hosting service, the video hosting service performs a search and presents to the user a webpage with search results. The webpage presented to the user may additionally include one or more ads. One problem with conventional methods is that the ads presented to users are often not of interest to users.